


Our Own Demons

by arcstark (QuintessentialNutcase)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alexander Pierce is an asshole, Also I can't spell, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Attempted Sexual Assault, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, But the boys are okay, Kidnapping, M/M, Obadiah Stane is the Worst (TM), Pre-Iron Man 1, Protective Tony Stark, SOME TRIGGER WARNINGS APPLY, This Author Reads too much smut to be afraid of it, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, but here we are, new fave tag, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 06:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 14,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20169556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuintessentialNutcase/pseuds/arcstark
Summary: Will Tony Stark ever ask that really hot and funny barista out?Will Bucky and Steve make rent on their run-down coffee shop?Is Tony full of shit?Is Bucky a human dumpster fire?Will Rhodey kill everyone and then himself, but especially Tony?Will the writer ever come up with a good summary?Find out here.





	1. Chapter 1

_“Sir, whilst I would usually encourage you to sleep and rest, as your meeting with the board of directors begins in two hours, I instead suggest that you take a shower and dress so that you might be presentable.”_

“J, that meeting isn’t until Thursday, you got a wire loose?”

_“Sir, today is Thursday.”_

“Shit.”

_“Indeed, sir.”_

Tony ran a hand down his face and cringed at the feel of engine oil on his skin. He knew he’d been down in the lab a while, but thirty-six hours was a whole different story.

He dragged himself up from the sofa that he’d unceremoniously flopped onto and into the elevator, where he tried very hard not to slump against the wall and pass out.

“How long ‘till Happy gets here?”

_“ An hour and a half, sir.”_

At least he’d have time to get coffee. Coffee will make everything better.

At least that’s what he chanted to himself as he showered and scrubbed a couple of days worth of oil from his skin and pulled on some board-worthy clothes. He was still buttoning, or rebuttoning, his shirt as he stepped out the door and headed down the street. He walked, or stumbled, for a couple of blocks before he could see the neon blue sign that hung over the door of his favourite haunt: _Bean Me Up, Coffee!_

The name made him cringe and smirk in equal measure, but the coffee was pure bliss, and it didn’t hurt that the usual barista had the best goddamn ass Tony had ever seen and the build of a Greek god – by which he meant Heracles, not Hephaistos.

As he stepped through the door, the warming smell of ground coffee beans filled his nostrils and the sound of faint humming greeted his ears.

The sight was something to behold. The barista, Barnes, as his badge had informed Tony many moons ago, leant against the bar on his elbow, his other hand toying with a pen, as he stared at the crossword in front of him, his tongue peeking out from behind his lips in concentration, and hummed along to some old tune playing over the radio. His shoulder-length dark hair was pulled up in a messy bun, and the black apron he wore was scattered with coffee grounds, chocolate powder, and a few splatters of old steamed milk. He looked furiously adorable – as he usually did.

The place was dead, not a customer in sight, but it was eight in the morning – because that’s when SI just had to have board meetings apparently.

Tony cleared his throat as he stepped towards the bar, and Barnes’ eyes darted up to him, and, after a beat, a slight smile graced his face.

“Wondered when you’d next drag yourself in for a hit.”

“Here I am.”

“You look like shit. And you missed a button.”

Tony looked down, cursing and muttering, “I literally rebuttoned you twice, are you kidding me?”, but apparently the shirt was not amused. Tony fiddlied with the buttons again whilst Barnes brought a mug up for him from under the counter.

“So, what’ll it be today?” Barnes asked, a knowing smirk pulling up one corner of his mouth.

“Something as dark and bitter as my soul.” It was something of a ritual they had had since Tony’s second or third trip into the shop.

“One white chocolate mocha coming up.” He then poured out a black, sugar less filter coffee and passed it across the counter to him.

Tony hopped up onto one of the stools and muttered thanks.

“So, what was it this time? Artificial intelligence or light speed warp cores?”

“You watch too much Star Trek.”

“No such thing.”

“Literally any Star Trek is too much Star Trek.”

“Get out of my shop, now, leave, go.” Barnes maintained a perfect poker face, only cracking when Tony did.

“Gimme a clue.”

“What?”

Tony pointed to the crossword, “Gimme a clue.”

“Uh, sure, okay, white metallic element, six letters, second letter ‘N’”

“Indium.”

Barnes smirked and filled it in.

“River in North-East Asia, four letters, ends in ‘R’.”

“Amur.”

He got a chuckle this time, and a little head shake.

“Novel by E M Forster, seven letters, third letter ‘U’.”

“Maurice, it’s good, you read it?”

“Nope.” He popped the ‘p’ loudly but scrawled it in anyway.

“Me either.”

“Debut solo album by a former Black Sabbath member, this one should be right up your street, three words, eight, two, three.”

“Blizzard of Ozz, I admit, not his best work, but certainly worth a listen.”

“I will put it on the list.”

They went back and forth a few more times, each clue Barnes gave, Tony taking great joy in firing back the answer immediately, much to Barnes’ increased irritation and perpetual amusement.

“I’m pretty sure that doing these with you counts as cheating, you’ve got the entire internet in your brain. But, now that you’ve finished my puzzle, what am I meant to glare at for the rest of the day?”

“Isn’t that what customers are for?”

“Yeah, but when I glare at the customers, we don’t make rent, so best not.”

“But you’re a complete angel, how could anyone look at that face and not swoon for joy?”

“That’s what I said, but the words ‘terrifying’ and ‘murderous’ were thrown back at me.”

“Blasphemy!”

Both men laughed, Barnes’ head shook and his eyes rolled, his long hair falling from its place and brushing his stubble covered – and perfectly bite-able, as an unhelpful segment of Tony’s brain supplied – neck.

He drained the last mouthful of his coffee and chucked far more bills on the counter than he needed to, earning another head shake.

“You can’t bribe me into telling you the bean secret, I’ll guard it to my dying day.”

“I’ll find out somehow, then you’ll be screwed, just you wait.”

Tony stood up and gave himself a little shake.

“Once more unto the breach.”

“Same time tomorrow?”

“God knows, I sure don’t.”

The corners of his mouth twisted up into a lopsided smile, and more wisps of his hair fell down over his face as he turned his face down to the counter and wiped it over.

Tony turned to leave, feeling much more ready for this stupid meeting, even if a glance at the clock told him that he was already late for it.


	2. Chapter 2

The sun filtered in through the dusty window and ripped curtains in a way that made Bucky Barnes want to smash his own head through them both. It was five in the morning, and Steve was snoring across the room, his tiny little asthmatic lungs doing their best to keep him kicking. Bucky dragged himself out of bed and ran his hand through his hair, cringing as he felt it matted greasily at the back of his head.

After a quick shower, some cereal – without milk because someone forgot to put it on the goddamn shopping list again – and a mug of coffee, he headed downstairs to open shop.

As much as he hated the arrangement, Steve couldn’t do the long days. He had just about everything wrong with him and if another bout of flu took him out of action for a week, leaving Bucky to do the paperwork he was gonna kill everyone and then himself. So, he dragged himself up at the asscrack of dawn to get the shop ready for the day, get the sandwiches and pastries from the bakery across the road, grab a couple of papers, get a pot going on the percolator, and wait for the bastards to trickle in and ruin his day.

About six the first couple of suit-clad asshats would wonder in, demand coffees to go, and then stare impatiently at him, mumbling about train times, as he complied. Then, they’d give him exact change, which he made sure to accept with his prosthetic hand, just so he could watch the slight flare of panic in their eyes as they fumbled for a few dollars extra.

Then around seven, Steve would stumble down and pour himself a cup, scoff a croissant, then start reconciling the till and petty cash from the day before, putting in stock orders, and all the shit that made Bucky want to cry more than catering to the customers.

When the train-getting business people had dried up, there was a lull before the normal, and impossibly more irritating, people started to wander in. This was when he pulled out his crossword and got started.

Most days, like today, he’d look up at the sound of the door opening to see an empty space, and have mere seconds to brace himself before Natasha Romanoff appeared inches behind him, succeeding every goddamn time at scaring the shit outta him. Other days, he didn’t hear the door and nearly punched her in the head.

“One of these days, you’re gonna get one of us killed, me by heart attack or you by bludgeoning.”

“Good morning to you too, James,” She said through a smirk.

“Ain’t nothing good about it.”

“Preaching to the choir there.”

He let out a chuckle as she settled on a stool at the counter and he turned around to brew her a pot of tea, something she decided to live off since they came back stateside.

“Still no luck convincing a rich asshole to pay you for being a creepy little shit?”

“It’s called being a bodyguard, and no. Apparently, tits disqualify you from taking bullets for people you couldn’t give less of a shit about.” He snorted.

“We’ve both done more than enough of that, I still don’t know why you’re so keen on that shit these days.”

“I have very specific skill set, I don’t care who I use it for. I’m not going to waste away wearing an apron and smiling at assholes all day.”

“Hey!” Bucky whipped his head around and raised a pointed finger at her, “I don’t smile at any of them, I glare and think about shooting them in head, and then they give me money out of fear that I will – it’s different.”

“I forgot, you don’t do customer service here.”

“You’re damn right.”

“How you pay your overheads, I do not know.”

“Well that’s out secret, Tasha,” He shot her a toothy grin, “We don’t.”

He set the tea in front of her, with one of their three chipped china teacups and a small jug of milk, watching as she slowly and indulgently poured in the milk, followed by the tea.

“That’s still definitely the wrong way around.”

“It’s called etiquette, Barnes, look it up.”

They spent a while in silence, Natasha sipping her tea, watching the few people who came and went, and Bucky taking and making their orders. When the pot ran dry she chucked a few more dollars than even a nice customer would pay onto the counter and left as swiftly as she arrived, leaving Bucky to deal with the slow tide of customers all on his lonesome.

Around midday, Steve reappeared from the closet they called an office and grabbed a sandwich from the glass cabinet, sat down and started staring with heart eyes at his phone.

“Just call her already, that face is making me sick to my stomach.”

“She said she’d call me.”

“She’s a busy woman, why the hell she’d ever call you I don’t know.”

“Stop being a jerk, Buck.”

“Well then stop being a little coward, and call her.”

It was the to-and-fro they’d had for ages, where Bucky slowly lost his mind over Steve’s complete and utter idiocy, and Steve lost his mind over some brunette in a red dress and kitten heels that came in for lunch one day three weeks ago and still hadn’t called him, despite promises to do so.

“Look, you’ve got her number in your phone, and you wrote yours down on some napkin. She probably lost it and is hoping you’d call her so she can talk to do. You might be some five-four rando, but you still charmed the hell outta her, in your own weird little way, now call the girl and invite her to that art thing you’ve been raving about all week.”

“Yeah, but does she even like art? How do you know she won’t think its lame?”

“Steve, the two of you had a thirty-minute conversation about how off his head on heroine Picasso was, I think she likes art.”

“But that was about cubism, this is impressionism, they’re different Buck.”

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

“No.”

“Call her.”

“Tomorrow.”

“Get away from my counter, go do whatever witchcraft you do back there, take your sad face and your sandwich with you.” With a sigh and a flipped bird, he dropped from the stool and headed back into the office.

Shaking his head, Bucky grabbed a wrap from the cabinet and settled down to have his own lunch, just in time for the door to open.

He looked up, mid-bite, ready to tell whoever it was to do one and come back in a half-hour when his eyes met some honeyed ones attached to a smirking and, frankly, ridiculous goatee.

“Am I interrupting something? Because you’re looking at that like you want to do more than eat it.”

“Yup, this my only half an hour of peace all day.”

“Pity.”

“Sure is.”

Bucky got up to pour out a black filter as he asked, “So, what’ll it be today?”

“Something as dark and bitter as my soul.” He spoke through a yawn, showing his tonsils to the world in a way that should have been disgusting, not endearing.

“One white chocolate mocha coming up.” He passed the mug over and watched the man for a moment.

He looked, as usual, fucking exhausted. His suit was impeccably arranged, not a single hair out of place, and shoes shiny enough to direct air traffic, but his eyes were hollow.

“So fancy pants board meeting, or a hot date with Forbes?”

“Neither, art auction.”

“Good or bad?”

“Well, apparently not giving a shit about the difference between a Monet and Manet offends these people, so not great.”

Bucky chuckled, “You should take my buddy along with you, he loves all that shit.”

“Reckon we could dress him up and send him in my place?”

The image of Steve drowning in a fancy three-piece with a Sharpie beard drawn on filled Bucky’s mind and it pulled a bark of laughter from him.

“Oh, God, that I would love to see.”

“I take it we don’t look alike.”

“He’s about half the size of a small dog and twice as annoying.”

Genius – the nickname Bucky had mentally dubbed him after the first time he cleaned up his crossword in one go – chuckled and swigged at his coffee.

“Trouble in paradise?”

“He’s pining after some girl.”

“How terrible.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So, aside from pining buddies and liking sandwiches a little too much, how goes barista-ing?”

“Same old, same old; how’s being some high-flying hotshot?”

“It varies from moment to moment.”

He tended to keep their conversations vague, never a place or a name mentioned, and Bucky recognised the phrasing of a man used to keeping people at arm's length. He respected that, but it still sort of made him want to wrap the guy up in a blanket and not let him leave until the world became soft, fluffy, and made of marshmallow, a concept which gave him an idea.

“Hey, you don’t happen to know any rich guys looking for bodyguards, do you?”

“Nope, but I know a few who need them, why? You looking for a change of careers paths? You’ve certainly got a physique for it.” He punctuated his words with a wink and a smirk.

“Nah, I’m good in my run-down apartment and god-awful five till nine, but I’ve got an old army buddy looking for work, you mind passing on her contact details?”

“Sure thing, write them down, anything for the guy who refuels me.”

Bucky scrawled her name and number onto a piece of notepaper and handed it over.

“Means a lot.”

“No problem. So, old army buddy, huh?” He asked in the same way everyone does. One look at the arm and pity fills their eyes and some weird sense of gratitude.

“Yeah.” He couldn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his voice, no matter how much he liked the guy.

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The question threw him for a moment before he placed it.

“Did you just quote Sherlock at me?”

His question was met with a shit-eating grin.

“Bet you don’t get that a lot.”

“Not once, and it was Egypt, actually.”

Genius nodded, seeming to understand that the words: “So, how did you lose your arm?” weren’t welcome.

Before long, he’d finished his coffee, paid way too much, and headed out the door, taking Bucky’s favourite bit of the day with him. Genius’ visits were irregular and sometimes lacking, but he never went for more than a couple of days without coming in, even if it was as Bucky was having breakfast himself, or halfway through closing. Any other customer would get the door slammed in their face, but Genius got a welcoming wave and an ‘it’s no problem’. Bucky, for the life of him, couldn’t tell you why.

He just liked the guy. He liked his stupid jokes, the incessant references that Bucky understood about half of, the way he just seemed to know everything on the planet that there is to know, how good he looked in those suits, and how he managed to look even better in a tank top, covered from head to toe in engine oil. He was also one hundred per cent sure that the guy was full of shit. Maybe he _was_ a big deal in some faceless corporation and fixed cars in his spare time, but AI’s with a sense of humour? Board meetings and multi-million-dollar trade deals? Government contracts? Half the crap the guy came out with sounded like a cross between Star Trek and Wayne Industries. So, yeah, Bucky knew he was full of shit because Batman doesn’t drop by shitty New York coffee shops named after sci-fi puns and drink their basic filtered crap.

But, despite their minimal contact and the obvious bullshit the guy spewed, Bucky liked him – hell, Bucky trusted him, which, as anyone will tell you, is a sentence rarer than rocking horse shit.


	3. Chapter 3

“Rhodey, honey bear, I am fine.”  
“You’re full of shit, Tones, you’re so full shit that your organs can unironically say that they’re up shit-creek without a paddle.”  
“That was specific and harsh, but okay. Anyway, this stupid deal thing, what am I selling them again?”  
“The new Jericho line, and don’t change the subject, I’ve got to spend hours on a plane with you, you need to get your shit together or I’m gonna have to get off mid-flight.”  
“Well, that can be arranged.” Tony wiggled his eyebrows and smirked at Rhodey across his desk, who let out a sigh and rolled his eyes.  
“You had to make it weird.”  
“It’s only weird if you make it weird.”  
“I don’t need flashbacks to our MIT dorm room, okay, your bouncing ass is a memory I’d like to leave behind.”  
Tony raised his hands in surrender, “Hey, you brought it up, man!”  
“It’s called nipping it in the bud, I have to do it so much I’m practically a gardener.”  
“You are full of the metaphors today, aren’t you?”  
“You and your shit drive me to obscure figurative language. And don’t think you’ve gotten away with this, okay, I’m still pissed at you.”  
“What the hell did I do this time?”  
“The fact that you don’t know is the problem. What you did, was a reporter called Christine Everhart, and now she’s giving everyone grief because you pulled your usual stunts, gave her absolutely nothing to work with, except for a gossip column.”  
“Would you rather I spilt the company’s deepest darkest secrets?”  
“I would rather the gossip columns dried up.”  
Tony dropped his head back and rolled his eyes.  
“Rhodey, I am trying my damnedest here, but I could not give less of a shit about what your bosses or my board think of my sex life if you paid me, which, to be honest, they kind of are. I make stuff that you can blow the bad guys up with, and make sure you, personally, don’t get blown up, that’s it, that’s my thing. If that isn’t enough for them, they can kiss my ass.”  
“You need help, Tony. Ever since Pepper-” Tony stood up to leave as soon as the words left his mouth.  
“And that is my cue, see you tomorrow, I’ll be late.”   
“Sit your ass down, and talk to me,” Tony opened the door and stepped outside before Rhodey’s next words stopped him.  
“No one blames you.”  
He turned on his heel, a bitterness rising in his throat.  
“Yeah, they do. The press, my employees, the board, your bosses, Obie, Pepper, her entire extended family, you, me, and literally everyone with a smartphone. They all blame me, so who’s full of shit now? Huh?”  
A beat of silence passed between them.  
“Alright, some people blame you, but it wasn’t all your fault.”  
“Look, I fucked up, she walked out. That’s on me. The company lost the only person who knew what the hell was going on, you guys lost the one person who made dealing with me bearable, the press lost a controlled and accessible insight into my life, and I lost the one person who knew how to deal with my- my- I don’t know, me. The one person who knew how to deal with me, and was willing to, and didn’t hate me for it. I know all this shit, okay. It’s all true. It’s all on me. But I am fucking trying, okay. What the hell else do you want from me?”  
He looked down to see his hands shaking a little, so he balled them up and shoved them into his jacket pockets.   
“Tony,” Rhodey began, his hands raised in placating surrender, “All I want is for you to be happy, you know that. You can’t do this alone. Find someone, seriously, before it all gets too much for you. We’ve been there, let’s not go back.”  
Tony replied with a terse nod and fled from the office and Rhodey’s sincere eyes.  
Once he was in the back of the car, he told Happy to take him home, where he drank enough to kill a college student, got changed and went out to find a warm stranger.  
He found himself, by complete accident, outside the flickering neon sign, face to face, through a glass door, with Barnes, mid-sign flip.  
He grinned and opened the door for him.  
“Three days in a row, huh? Lucky me.”   
“You’ve got no idea.” He flashed him his most lewd smile and wink.  
Barnes chuckled and poured him his usual coffee.  
“You got anything stronger?”  
“This place look like it’s got a liquor license?”  
“I guess not. You were closing up, right? I can go…” Tony trailed off to gauge his reaction.  
“Or you could not.” His eyes swept over Tony with a concerned gaze, “You don’t look like you should be wandering down dark alleys on your own.”  
“Your concern is flattering, but I can look after myself.”  
“I’m sure, but you ain’t gotta. Sit down, tell me something interesting.”  
“If you eat ten million bananas, you’ll die of radiation poisoning.”  
“Who the hell ate ten million bananas to prove that?”  
“Someone who really likes bananas, I guess.” There was a moment of companionable silence as Barnes finished up cleaning he counter and coffee machine and Tony drank half his coffee.  
“Tell me something else.” He asked, leaning against the counter across from Tony.  
“Uranus rains diamonds.”  
“I wish, maybe this place could get a new lick of paint.”  
“You’re the owner then?”   
“You’ve been coming here for months and you still haven’t figured that out?”  
“What can I say, before coffee I’m useless and afterwards I’ve got shit to do.”  
“Ain’t that the truth. Yeah, I run the place with my buddy Steve. He does the books, puts in the orders, keeps the lights on, I make the coffee.”  
“Thought you’d be the more behind the scenes type, what with your shining love of customer service.”  
“Haven’t got the patience for it, ever since I came back, all the bureaucracy just feels so pointless.”  
“I know the feeling.”  
His hair was pulled back, but barely staying there, strands fell around his face, more were tucked behind his ears, and the rest seemed to divide themselves between staying in the bun and sticking to his neck. His white button-up shirt was mostly covered by the black apron, and his sleeves were rolled up to reveal one tattooed arm and one glinting chrome one.   
Months ago, he’d recognised it as soon as he saw it, part of Stark Industries Winter Soldier line, state of the art prosthetics provided dirt cheap for veterans – only approved by the board because Tony managed to convince them it was good for publicity – well, Pepper had – but designed to help lessen Tony’s guilt at the news that a terrorist cell had captured a shipment of StarkTech weapons and decimated an army base with the contents.   
Maybe that was part of the guy’s appeal to Tony, he literally had his name branded onto him. It wasn’t ownership, or some weird possessive streak, at least yet, but there was a certain allure to a guy as hot as Barnes walking around with a little bit of Tony’s tech attached to him. It was pride, more than anything else.   
Tony liked giving people things, liked looking after them. Rhodey had gotten used to it, Obie revelled in it, and Pepper had never quite accepted it. Her independence was her strongest quality, she wasn’t the next in a long line of Tony Stark’s conquests, and she wasn’t going to be treated like one, but to Tony, money was meaningless, if he could make someone else’s life easier with it, especially someone he cared about, then that was the fixation of the day for him.   
It was that same feeling of warmth that filled his chest when he saw Barnes’ arm.  
And it was then that he realised that he’d been staring somewhat inappropriately at the guy’s prosthetic arm for a really long time.  
“You alright there.” Barnes’ voice was terse, and Tony had had way too much liquor to successfully dig himself out of this without sounding like a massive creep, and asshole, or completely blowing his miraculously attained cover with the recluse.  
“I like your arm.” He blurted out before he could use his brain to rule it out on the grounds of creepiness.  
“It’s not for sale.”  
“Obviously.”  
A moment of awkward silence followed.   
“You wanna hear the story?”  
Barnes seemed surprised by his own question, but nowhere near as much as Tony was.   
“You wanna tell it?”  
“Not really.”  
“Then no worries.”  
More silence followed, but this time a soft smile settled across Barnes’ face, and Tony had to admit it was his best look yet. Sure, his angry face fuelled Tony’s more E-Rated dreams, but that smile was something to get willingly, consciously lost in.  
“What brings you out to a coffee shop in the middle of the night, anyway?” Barnes broke the moment, turning away to empty out and clean the espresso machine.  
“Had a rough day. Felt like going out.” It felt like a weak excuse even as he said it, but it was closest he could get to ‘I feel dead inside unless I’m screwing a stranger or sat here talking to you, and even tinkering with engines doesn’t distract me from it anymore’ without crying, and no one needs that.  
“Well, as you can see,” He gestured to the empty street outside and the somehow even more dead atmosphere of the coffee shop, “this is the place to be when it comes to meeting people and having fun of an evening.”  
“Absolutely.” He offered a weak grin in response. Barnes’ eyes held his with intent, almost a dare to take some kind of plunge, and the words, ‘Want to finish up here and then go grab a drink?’ were just about to pass over his lips when the suspense was interrupted.  
A shout from the door behind the counter shattered their moment, “Hey, Jerkface! You want this dinner or what? It’s stone-cold and I’m gonna eat it if you don’t!” Followed by the sound of violent coughing.  
“Yeah, just gimme a minute here, Steve!” He yelled back, offering Tony an apologetic smile. “My buddy Steve, he gets grumpy when I ignore him, more effort than its worth, sorry.” He patted the top of Tony’s hand with his left one and even at the brief contact with the cold metal, Tony’s skin sang.   
“Sure, no worries.” He pulled out his wallet, ignored Barnes’ attempts to wave him away, and chucked a ridiculous amount of money on the counter, leaving before Barnes could recognise Benjamin Franklin, kick up a fuss, and try to give it back.  
As he left and walked back down the street, he thought to himself that ‘Jerkface’ was a weird pet name, but who was he to judge, he called his robotic kids Dum-E and U.


	4. Chapter 4

Natasha wasn’t people watching, as she usually did, today she turned her terrifyingly perceptive gaze onto Bucky, and he was ready to crack under it.   
“The hell are you starin’ at?” He snapped at her, after twenty silent minutes of tea-sipping and studying.   
“You. You’ve been weird for days. You’re more tense than usual, James, and you haven’t called Steve a stupid punk all morning. Are you getting sick or something?”  
“Or something.” He tersely replied, wiping down the same spot on the counter for the fourth time.  
“A girl?”  
“No.”  
“A guy?”  
“What is it with you and questions, this isn’t the KGB, Romanoff.” He let a little too much emotion into his voice and timed the outbreak so poorly that even Steve wouldn’t have been able to miss it.  
“A guy then, what’s his name?”  
“I don’t know.”  
“Well, what does he do?”  
“I don’t know. He talks a bunch of sci-fi shit about it.”  
“Okay, then what do you know?”  
“Great hair, looks good in a suit, and I wanna lick his forearms.” He tried to make his tone dismissive and crude, but it turned into an impression of a love-sick teenage girl without his permission.  
She was silent for a moment before letting out a chuckle followed by a low whistle.  
“You got it bad, Barnes.”  
He slumped against the counter.   
“Yeah, I know.” It was more of a whine than anything else, “Almost asked him out too, but Steve ruined everything and now he hasn’t been in for days. I think I freaked him out or maybe he’s straight, or a bigot, I don’t know.”  
He rested against the counter on his elbows, forehead pressed against his palm, while the other hand ran its fingers through his hair, the cool metal against his scalp now familiar enough to feel soothing. Natasha rested a hand on his shoulder.  
“You need to get laid, Barnes. You need to spend time with actual real people who aren’t Steve, me, or the customers you hate. You need to do more than make coffee, eat food, sleep badly, rinse, repeat. Or you’re going to lose it again, and that didn’t go well last time, did it, Sergeant?”  
He winced at the memory leading to his incident and not-so-honourable discharge.  
It was hardly his fault that an anxious break down coincided with road ambush and the failure of bomb disposal to do their damn jobs. Not that it was their fault either, in fairness.   
“Alright, next time he comes in, if he does, I’ll ask him out, properly. Find out his name and everything. Promise.”  
“The fact that you still roll over every time I mention the accident is all the more proof that you should go back to that shrink. I’ve still got her card; I’ll send you her details again.”  
“I don’t need a shrink.”  
“Yeah, you do. We don’t do feelings, Barnes, but you’re practically my brother. I’d kill for you.”  
“Isn’t the phrase, ‘die for you’?”  
She cocked an eyebrow at him, and her lips twisted into a smirk that almost seemed feral.  
“I’m not sure it’ll come to that.”  
He thought back to the few images that still flashed through his mind when he tried to sleep at night. The truck being ran off the road; the gunfire; his men, bleeding; his vision, spinning; his arm, burning with blinding pain; Natasha, taking down every single one of the bastards, one by one, with cold, calculating precision, and dragging them both, the sole survivors, on either side, to safety.   
“True.”  
She smiled and slid from her stool.  
“Lick the man’s arms, Barnes, do it for all of us.”  
And with that, she was gone, leaving Bucky promising himself that the next time he saw Genius, he was gonna proposition the shit outta him.


	5. Chapter 5

It had been three months since Tony Stark’s feet had touched American soil, and he’s been craving a cheeseburger for four of them.

On the way to his impromptu press conference, he scarfed two of them and had another in his pocket for later. He was going to end this shit once and for all, no more selling to both sides, no more under the table deals, no more weapons full stop.

And so that’s exactly what he said – to hell with the stock market, to hell with the press. They’d wanted accountability, they’d wanted responsibility, they’d wanted him making the tough decisions. Well, now they’ve got it.

His little sabbatical in an Afghan cave had left him with many things: a heart condition for one, thanks to the shoddy surgical conditions (no more stimulants for him – a sad farewell to his greatest caffeinated love), but also a sense of perspective. If he didn’t jam a crowbar in the works, the world was going to progress, sure, but not for the better.

The day that Rhodey found him was a God-send. He’d escaped from that lonely hell-hole after stalling for far too long with the building process, analysing their patterns, and finding the right weak link to seduce, brain, and pretend to be for long enough to get over the wall and well towards the horizon. Then, when he’d done just that, he was left wondering about for what felt like weeks but had really been hours, slowly losing his damn mind in the ever-changing yet perpetually the same landscape, and the sun that made his skin peel and his head pound.

But then came Rhodey, bless his camo’ed ass, to the rescue. Not that he seemed to like the company’s new direction.

“Tony, you’re gonna run the damn thing into the ground, Stane is gonna kick my ass if I don’t change your mind, you gotta give us something. Some new design, some specs – hell, a suped-up revolver would cut it at this point. Just prove to someone that you haven’t lost it completely.”

“I did have an epiphany, actually. I’m working on it now, could revolutionise the industry.”

“More ballistics?”

“Not that industry, Honeybear.”

JARVIS chipped in when the line immediately went dead.

_“I think that went well, Sir.”_

“Thanks, J.”

Tony stared at the specs for the new and improved arc-reactor, an idea provided by staring long and hard at the components of the Jericho missiles, trying to think of something he could build that would get him out of the damn cave, and not do any good in the hands of a terrorist organisation – he pretty much came up with zilch on that front.

But the palladium had given him an idea.

“Run the simulation and get back to me, I’ve got a meeting with an eagle.”

_“Mr Stane is waiting for you in the living room, Sir.”_

And so he was, his face, once thinly veiled with civility, now thundering.

“This isn’t going down well with the board, Tony. They’re going lock you out if you don’t get your head screwed on tight, and they’re not wrong. You’ve got to give me something to feed them, or we’re both out in the cold.”

“I got something that’ll keep the hippies happy, that’s for sure.”

“Arc-reactor tech?”

“Yup.” He popped the ‘p’ as he flopped proudly down onto the sofa, grabbing a slice of pizza as he went. “It’s gonna change the goddamn world, Obie, I’m telling you.”

“It better, because all it’s changing at the moment is our job-security. You got some specs for me? Board’s meeting tomorrow to decide your fate – I’ve got to have something to show them.”

“Sure, JARVIS, give Obie access to our latest project, read and write privileges. Add their comments so I can ignore them later.”

“Thank you, Tony, really. That’s going to be very helpful.” He pulled two opened beer bottles from behind his chair, offering one to Tony “Here, to celebrate the new direction.”

“I’m actually laying off the liquor and stimulants right now-“

“Just the one then, go on, it won’t do you any harm.”

He had to admit, after the few months he’d had, all he wanted was a goddamn drink. He accepted and offered a slight toast, though the tense look in Obie’s eyes had him worried. The beer tasted wrong and slightly bitter, but it had never been his drink anyway and it had been a while since he’d had one. They sipped their drinks in somewhat awkward silence.

He was nearly halfway done when he broke the silence.

“So how’re things with you, any less of a loner than when I,” He paused for a moment, as he felt a sudden tightness in his chest, not uncommon, he’d been an anxious child – but this was on a whole other level. “When I -” He dropped his drink as his whole arm flared up in agony, “When I left – ah fuck!” The blood seemed to fly from his head into space, the world span and he gripped the armrest, trying to steady himself.

“Help, me, please.” Each word was a struggle as he laboured for breath – he’d had panic attacks, anxiety attacks, you name it. He’d overdosed enough times to know that you don’t fuck about with these things, but he put two and two together.

“You know, Tony, I heard about your newfound cardiac issues from Rhodey – he’s worried about you, bless his soul. I thought, well that dose of caffeine would kill anyone, I wonder how much of it would kill you, barely half, impressive really. A little more personal than a terrorist ambush on foreign soil, but a damn sight easier to arrange.” Obie leant down to come face to face with Tony, where he was hunched over the arm of the sofa, struggling for breath.

“But, you know what they say, when you want something done properly, and all that.” He plucked the bottle from the ground and replaced it with his own. “So, what are the last words of the famous Tony Stark going to be? Not that anyone except me will hear them, of course.”

He buried the crushing betrayal that had hit him like a freight train and summoned every ounce of venom and strength he had left, spitting as hard as he could.

“Fuck. You.”

Stane chuckled and stood up straight.

“Likewise, you spoilt fuckin’ brat.”

And with that, he was gone.

“JAR- JARVIS, help me, please.”

An answering voice came from the glasses in Tony’s pocket rather than the usual speakers.

_“Sir, emergency services are inbound – Mr Stane deactivated my network in the main house shortly after you began speaking, but did not take into account your mobile connections.”_

“Thanks, J,” his face twisted in pain as wave after wave of nausea and tightness washed over him unstoppably.

_“I also recorded your conversation and sent it to local law enforcement, who are pursuing Stane as we speak, Sir, just remain conscious and steady a little longer.”_

As he fought for his life in the ambulance, the predominant thought in his mind was how much he needed a holiday.


	6. Chapter 6

It had been a few months since Bucky gave up on Genius. The guy hadn’t come into the shop since the night he’d wandered in drunk off his ass and Bucky had almost, almost, plucked up the courage to ask him out.

It had also been months since Bucky last found anyone vaguely interesting: romantically, platonically, aesthetically, physically, anything.

So, when Natasha’s visits lessened, with her fancy new job as some CEO billionaire’s bodyguard in Malibu, he was pretty much left alone.

Well, he had Steve, but they’d known each other for longer than they’d been alive, they were practically bickering extensions of the same person. So, Bucky was alone in the world.

Therefore, when an okay-looking, okay-sounding, rich guy started flirting with him, he thought: fuck it – why the hell not? If the guy was into human dumpster fires like Bucky, then why not get some out of the situation.

It was that logic that got him a couple of grand in his bank account, a brand-new suit, and the reservation at some fancy-ass restaurant that he was currently being escorted to by the most condescending waiter he’d ever met.

When his date came into view, he smiled nervously in the consuming gaze of the older man.

Alexander Peirce stood up and pulled Bucky’s chair out for him, just to really hammer the point home, greeting him with a low whisper in his ear as he sat down.

“Evening, James. You look practically edible in that suit.”

“Well, Alexander, you have an excellent tailor.” In all his years, Bucky never thought he’d end up the sugar baby of some weird, creepy, prosthetic-fetish old rich guy, but I guess that’s how things are now – he had bills to pay after all.

The dinner went well, with only minimal leering from Pierce and minimal shuddering from Bucky. They had very few things in common: Peirce liked classical music, Bucky preferred indie rock; Pierce liked pretentious French cinema, Bucky needed a bit of Romance and Comedy in his life, so sue him; Pierce wanted to go back to his place, Bucky couldn’t think of anything worse.

Unfortunately for Bucky, the gold-gilded furniture, the fur coats, and the menu without prices on it had been slowly wearing him down all night into a mindset of total inferiority. These poncey rich fuckers were going to tear him to pieces at the first sign of weakness, like circling sharks, and Alexander Peirce was his lifeboat – a way out without too much pain or effort, just a little rowing.

It was _that _logic that got him into the chauffeured sleek black car that Bucky wouldn’t have been able to afford as a hearse and on his way back to Pierce’s place.

As soon as the car door closed, Peirce started his slow and slimy approach. A hand on Bucky’s knee became one on his upper thigh, a brush of the hand became a wrist gripped a little too tight to have friendly intentions. Finally, a finger claiming to brush dust from the lapel of his jacket became entangled in his slicked-back hair, pulling Bucky’s mouth to his.

Peirce’s lips were harsh and claiming against Bucky’s own, and so far from the fun way that it made his skin crawl. Unfortunately, being strapped into the man’s private car on the way to his, no doubt very discreet, apartment building, made escape very difficult. So, he did the next best thing.

“How ‘bout we save this for the bedroom, huh?”

He bought himself some time. Maybe he could make excuses, feign illness, or climb out of a bathroom window – maybe he could do all three, in that order, who knows?

With a predatory smile, Peirce agreed, one hand still pulling slightly at Bucky’s hair, and the other still squeezing his thigh, for the rest of the journey.

The journey from the car to the elevator was a blur. He saw marbled floors and doormen in smart uniforms, who didn’t seem to bat an eye at the spaced-out amputee being dragged through their lobby. Then, when the mirrored doors of the elevator closed, the next thing Bucky knew was being pressed into them and practically mauled by the very, very eager Peirce.

The bile was rising in his throat as Peirce grabbed at him through and under his clothes, he ripped off buttons and yanked at zips, all the while Bucky was practically floating above himself, passively watching as his own limp form was subject to the decidedly unwelcome ministrations.

Finally, something snapped, and the instincts instilled him by years of sleeping with one eye open and one hand locked and loaded kicked in.

He pulled his hand from Peirce’s grasp and slammed his metal elbow into his jaw, not hard enough to break, but hard enough to stun him for a moment or two.

Peirce staggered backwards; his expression thunderous.

“You ungrateful, little shit,” He spat, as Bucky slammed his hand into the button for the ground floor, “You think you can just take my money, that suit, that dinner, all without giving me shit?”

“Consider the money returned, and I’ll ship the suit to you – not much I can do about the dinner, but considering you had lobster and I had a salad, I’d say there’s not much owed there. I’m not for fucking sale.” His voice was much stronger than his knees, but he just willed his body to hold up for a while longer, long enough to get him away from this asshole.

“How about you make up for that little outburst, and we’ll call it quits? Huh?” He closed in on Bucky, cornering him. “Can you really afford to pay that money back? Can you really afford to say no?” Bucky could smell the wine on his breath where their faces were mere inches apart.

“Maybe not,” He said, eyes darting up to the panel, sighing in relief when he saw they were nearly back at the lobby, “But that isn’t going to stop me.” Peirce’s arms have placed either side of Bucky’s head, caging him in, so he ducked under one, and made for the door, as they began to open.

Then he walked as fast as he dared back to the main entrance – grateful for the glazed over and apathetic eyes of the doormen.

When he was outside, he kept walking, he didn’t care where he just needed distance. A few blocks later, he slumped against the wall of an alleyway, and his legs gave out under him. He fumbled for his phone from his pocket and called Natasha, sending her a GPS link to his location and about thirty illegible text messages amounting to: ‘Help me, please.’

He dropped his phone down beside him and willed away the images of his men crushed by debris, kids young enough to be his, bleeding out on the ground. He inhaled deeply to rid his lungs of the smell of his own burning flesh. He massaged his shoulder to try and remove the phantom ache, the immense pressure and clenched every muscle he had to try and fend off the vulnerability, the helplessness.

Most of all he just waited in the dark


	7. Chapter 7

It had been a good day, all in all. An early flight back into the city, a board meeting in the morning, lunch at his favourite spot, catching up with Rhodey, fruitful visit to his tailor, followed by a nice dinner at his hotel, and a few relaxing drinks at the bar. It would have been better without the constant stony expression of his new bodyguard following his every move.

After the multiple attempts on his life and the frightening reminder of his own mortality, Tony had retreated from the city back to his, usually only seasonal, home in Malibu for a while. Eventually, his reason outweighed his pride and he dug out the scrap of paper that Barnes the Brilliant Barista had scrawled a name and number on what felt like a lifetime ago.

He ignored the waves of unexplained sadness and nostalgia that came over him when he remembered the last time he saw the guy, chalking it up to a longing for simpler times, before he knew what his name and brain had done to the world, and before he had to add a cardiac surgeon to JAVIS’s speed dial, and he called the woman up.

How did he hear about her? She had asked.

A recommendation, he had replied.

“You know that you’re meant to watch potential threats, right, not me?” He’d remarked once, after a particularly unreadable yet disapproving look as he ordered his third drink.

“The way you treat your body, you seem to be its biggest threat.”

He scoffed a little at that.

“Well, I have to rebuild my tolerance somehow – since the surgery I can drink again, but I’ve been off liquor for months, all my hard work wasted.”

“I’m sure it was hard work indeed.”

They sat in silence again for a while.

“So, it’s been two weeks and I know nothing about you. You’ve already caught in more compromising situations than most people can count up to, time for some kind of dialogue, I think – tell me something, literally anything, about yourself.”

She stared him down for a while before responding slowly.

“I like tea, and I miss my daily ritual with it.”

Tony was taken aback, not only had she actually responded but also that she’d done so with an almost emotional detail. It wasn’t something he planned to waste.

So now, when she was sat on a barstool beside him, her scrutinising stare alternating between him and the other patrons, he decided to push a little further.

“Bartender, one pot of your finest English tea for the lady here, thank you.”

She slowly assessed him before speaking. “You remember that?”

“I know three things about you and one is your name, so yeah I remember number three. I also remember there was a ritual involved.”

She rolled her eyes, but some amusement had crept into her expression.

“I used to have a pot of tea every morning with a friend. It was nice.”

A pot arrived in front of her, and she began to pour on milk, then tea.

“Someone was educated somewhere fancy,” Tony remarked, though he was more intrigued by the focus on her face as she watched the colours mix and swirl, the cold white milk slowly warmed and turned to a pale, pinkish brown by the brew.

“Buzzfeed, actually. I prefer it this way around.”

He went back to his own drink, making a mental note to order her a pot wherever it was likely to be good.

Within a few moments, her phone sprang to life, a voicemail and several text messages all left unread thanks to the spotty signal in the basement hotel bar. He wasn’t sure what frightened him more, the speed with which she moved, or the genuine concern on her face.

“We need to go somewhere – I’m not leaving you here, but I have to go – so you’re coming with me.” She all but steered him out of the building and to the garage.

“But, Happy went home, where are we going?” He tried to get her to stop for a moment, but the woman had ways that he didn’t understand, the next thing he knew, he was strapped into a car, and they were away.

She passed him her phone, a map open and a symbol he recognised as the SOS function on one of the previous StarkPhone models flashed on the screen.

“We’re going there, I’ll explain later, you’re navigating, so sober up.”

He took the hint from her death glare and navigated them through New York traffic to what appeared to be a dingy alleyway.

She pulled up the pavement and swung the door open.

“Wait here.” She got out, engine still running, and jogged down the alley, stopping a little way in, crouching down, and talking to someone.

Tony, overwhelmed by curiosity over what had turned the stoic and apathetic Romanoff into someone who actually gave a shit about another human being, to such an extent that she nearly ran over three old ladies to get to them, he got out of the car and followed her slowly down the alley.

He squinted in the poor lighting and searched for the face of the huddled over form.

When he recognised the man, it wasn’t by his face, it was by his arm. He had one wrapped around his body, which was a dark net of tattoos, visible through the hastily unbuttoned and dishevelled shirt sleeve, grabbing at his other shoulder, as though it was causing him immense pain, then he saw the glinting metal of the other one, writhing and tensing in the darkness.

Then, with one glance at the long dark hair, he knew it was Barnes. Tony was suddenly hit with feeling like an awful creep like he’d followed the guy he’d once made a drunken idiot of himself in front of, right to his weakest moment, and then stared at him like an idiot.

He couldn’t be here for this, he just couldn’t, so he left the two old friends to their chaos and turned down a street at random, shooting Romanoff a short text.

“Don’t worry about me. Take tomorrow too.”


	8. Chapter 8

Slowly, the orders to ‘breath in’ and ‘breath out’ began to match up to his actual breaths, and his mind began clear, revealing to him that he was sat on the filthy ground beside a dumpster down some dodgy alleyway in downtown Manhattan.

Natasha was crouched in front of him, running a hand down his arm in a calming rhythm, her usually neat suit was smeared with dirt and her eyes burned with protective fury. He wouldn’t get away from her questions for long.

“Your hair’s a mess.” He croaked, attempting a weak smile.

“Well, you tried to put me into a chokehold a few minutes ago.”

He winced, “Sorry about that.”

“We both know that we’ve done worse to each other. Don’t sweat it.”

He nodded and she stood up, offering him a hand, which he took gratefully, and pulled himself up, wincing.

“Please tell me you’ve got a car, I walked for way too long before I collapsed here, and these are new shoes.”

“I noticed; hot date gone wrong?”

“Something like that.” He tried to move towards the car, but she placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back slightly.

“James,” The name brought Peirce’s voice into his mind, but that was quickly swept away by a barrage of memories of Tasha saying it as tenderly as she did then. “You don’t spiral this badly from a misunderstanding – who did this?” She lightly lifted his flesh hand up to her eyes and ran a finger over the newly blooming bruises enclosing his wrist.

Bucky let out a sigh and nodded.

“Some rich guy asked me out, he seemed nice enough and we weren’t making rent. I figured I’d drop a few hints, let him have his fun and get something out of it. It was a solid plan, people do it all the time. Hell, we used to do it all the time.” She let out a weak laugh.

“That’s not quite what we did, Barnes.”

“Not far off though.”

She nodded and they both headed towards the car again.

“So, what went wrong?”

“I guess I just picked the wrong guy.”

Bucky could tell from her expression that that wasn’t the answer she wanted. She wanted names, addresses, and her favourite knife. But instead of pushing, she pulled him into a hug and squeezed hard enough that he could feel both his arms and the differences between them – a much-needed reassurance of the time that had passed since the day that left him in agony and a few pounds lighter.

She turned back to the car and when he was about to slide into the passenger seat, she stood stock-still and rolled her eyes. Checking her phone, she sighed.

“We have a missing drunk billionaire shaped problem.”

“What does that even mean?”

“You know my new boss, the CEO?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, he was supposed to wait in the car, but apparently he chose a different course of action.”

She slid into the driver’s side and they pulled away, turning down street after street, combing the area, wondering just how far he could have gone.

After at least an hour of searching, Bucky was beginning to lose focus. He didn’t know what the guy looked like: how useful was he in looking for him? So, he rested his head against the window and closed his eyes, letting the exhaustion of the day wash over him. The next time he opened his eyes, it was to the flickering of a familiar neon sign out the windscreen.

“Bean Me Up, Coffee!” said the sign.

“Go get some sleep, I’ll check on you in the morning,” said Natasha.

He clambered out of the car and stumbled towards the door before he saw the man standing in front of it.

He practically landed on him in his unsteady state and grabbed a fistful of the guy’s expensive feeling jacket before he ended up on his ass again, mumbling apologies, he met his eyes, and then stopped in his verbal tracks.

“The hell?” He asked.

“There you are,” Natasha said, suddenly behind him.

“Hi.” Said Genius, a sheepish smile on his face.

Natasha grabbed the back of Bucky’s collar and lifted him back onto his feet. Genius adjusted his jacket and shrugged.

“Long time no see?”

“You know each other?” Natasha asked, slowly eyeing Bucky’s dumbfounded-ness and Genius’s – god, he really needed to find out his name – guilty expression.

“I was a regular, for a while – or irregular, I suppose. Then the whole cave thing happened, you know the rest.”

“I don’ know the res’, cave thing?” Bucky’s speech was far from eloquent, but given the night he’d had, that was fair enough.

“Long story.” They both replied.

“He’s your billionaire CEO?” Bucky’s eyes widened and he turned to Natasha.

“He’s your ‘Genius’ one-that-got-away?” She replied, a smirk on her face as she unfolded the situation.

“Wait, you call me the ‘one-that-got-away’?” Genius asked, a grin plastered across his face.

“Wha’ the hell _is_ your name?” Bucky spluttered.

Natasha turned and left, shaking her head and she went and calling back to them. “I’ll come back in the morning to check on you and pick him up. Flight’s at mid-day.”

“Cancel it!” Genius replied.

“Wha’s your goddamn name?” Bucky asked again.

“Not your assistant,” Natasha called back.

Genius met his eyes and smiled, extending a hand.

“Tony Stark, you gotta name besides ‘Barnes’?”

Bucky grasped his hand with his own and squeezed.

“Bucky, Bucky Barnes.”

Tony glanced at his watch.

“The night’s still young, Bucky Barnes, want a coffee? I know a great place.”

Bucky smiled and fumbled with his keys until the door let them inside, flipped on a few lights and started a pot of coffee.

“White chocolate mocha?” He asked, gesturing to the filter machine.

Tony winced and said, “I’d love to, I really would, but I’m restricted to decaf these days. It physically pains me, but placebo is better than nothing.”

Bucky nodded, pulling out a decaffeinated bag of ground coffee, and firing up the espresso machine.

“Coming up.”

He knocked back half a mug himself before Tony’s was ready. When he was done, feeling slightly more awake, he joined him on the customer side of the counter and placed the mug in front of him.

“So, all those times you came in, complaining about artificial intelligence subroutines and robots not doing as you tell them, all that crap.” Bucky began.

“Yeah.”

“You weren’t talking shit?”

There was a moment of silence, then Tony let out a raw and honest laugh, that broke through the layers of tension and time between them.

“You thought I was making it all up to impress you?”

“I thought you were making it up, no impressing came into it.”

“You sure are something, aren’t you?”

“I’m something, sure, we all are.”

“So, what gave me away? The billionaire thing, or the fact that my names on the back of your phone?”

“Not just my phone, actually.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Bucky had shrugged off his jacket almost as soon as they’d stepped over the threshold, and now, with his sleeves rolled up, he could see Tony’s gaze resting on his arm, and it sent a wave of nausea through him. Twice in one goddamn night.

“Look, I’ve had enough of assholes with kinks eyeing me up like some specialised sex doll – it is a weirdly fucking common fetish and I’ve had enough of it, okay, so take your goddamn amputee thing somewhere else.” He stood up and retreated to his side of the counter, safe in the knowledge that he was the only person in the whole world, including Steve, that knew about the 9mm taped to its underside, just to the left of the to-go bags.

“What?” Tony asked, his eyes meeting Bucky’s and pure confusion spreading across his face.

“You tryna say that’s not what’s happening here?”

“I didn’t even know that was a thing that people did, seriously?” His arms were raised in a gesture of either surrender or attempted calming.

Bucky fought to keep the tension in his shoulders, not to let it melt away just yet. So what, maybe he didn’t know that he wasn’t alone.

‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Barnes, just because you want them to be true’, said the rational part of his brain.

‘Jump his bones,’ said the less rational part.

“Yeah, it’s a thing.”

“Weird.” He lowered his arms but kept both hands in view above the counter.

Bucky didn’t fill the silence, he waited until it broke Tony’s resolve.

“Look, you’ve got my name written on your arm. You’ve got something I made, I personally designed, attached to you. I managed to give you a helping hand, excuse the pun, before we’d even met, let alone before I started to care about you. Do you not get the appeal of that? Because I don’t know how else to say it.” His eyes were almost pleading with Bucky to understand, and a stretch of silence filled the air as Bucky chewed over his words.

“I get it.” He said, as the tension finally melted away. “So, you like helping people, huh?”

“Well,” That sheepish smile came back with a vengeance. “I’m a billionaire, so it’s not difficult, as long as people don’t get stubborn on me. Speaking of, you still making rent on this place, because I’m happy to help out.”

“Yeah, the last time someone said that, it didn’t go too well for me.” He held up his right wrist and gestured to his general person.

Something flared in Tony’s eyes, whether anger or horror, he couldn’t say, but his jaw tightened and he shook his head.

“I’m not trying to buy you or anything. No strings attached. Just… supporting local businesses. Keeping my favourite coffee shop open. That kind of thing.” His face seemed genuine, and as much as Bucky wanted to sail away into the sunset with him, every experience he’d had in life told him to keep pushing.

“So, we get go drinks and you find out that I don’t put out on the first date, what happens then?”

“We go out on another date?”

“Second date neither, what about then?”

“Well, the third is traditional.”

“Screw tradition. How long till you get bored and bitter and start to demand things back that I need to keep the lights on?”

Tony stretched out his hand across the counter, not touching Bucky’s, but the invitation clear.

“Look, Bucky – a hell of a name, by the way – I like you, I like this place. Money means jack shit to me, okay, I was born with it and I’ll probably die with it, it’s a horrible and entitled attitude, I know. But it’s my life. I’m not gonna ask for anything back, my company donates a million dollars to a random charity every month. We have a virtual wheel of fortune to decide which one. I’m not kidding, that happens. I’m not some asshole baby-boomer dragon that hoards shit like it’s the forties again. No strings. I promise.” His speech was stilted, probably where the alcohol wore off and the decaf-placebo effect did its best to make a difference, resulting in slow movements, slurred speech, and general tiredness.

Bucky took his hand and nodded.

“Okay. But we both need to sleep, or Tasha’s gonna kick our collective asses in the morning. Steve’s at his girl’s, so I’ll set up his bed for you.” He shut off the machines, already hating himself for how much he’s going to have to scrub at the dried-up grounds in the morning, followed by the lights, and then he headed for the door marked ‘Staff Only’, which led upstairs to their flat.

He turned back to Tony, still sat at the counter, “Coming?” He asked.

“I thought you and Steve were, you know, together.”

“You thought I was dating that tiny stupid asshole?”

“Well, I’ve never actually met the guy, but you live together, run a business together, and he did manage to steer you away from me with very few words, forgive the assumption.”

“Yeah, much to my irritation, I cooked mushrooms every time it was my day for a month.”

“He doesn’t like mushrooms?”

“Allergic. Not enough to kill him, but enough to piss him off and make him all itchy at night.”

They both chuckled for a moment. Tony downed the dregs of his cup and followed Bucky to the door, but as he was about to step through, Bucky stopped him.

“By the way, what’s wrong with my name?”

Tony laughed, “Nothing, just a bold choice to keep using into adulthood, is all. I assume it’s short for something.”

“Buchannan, middle name.”

“You got a first name, or did they skip that one?”

“James.”

“James Buchanan Barnes.”

“Yup.”

“Suits you.”

“Well good, it’s the only one I’ve got.”

“We going to go up to sleep or what? Cause my eyes are way ahead of us and catnapping as we speak.” As he spoke, he drew out a few long blinks and stifled a yawn. “I’m getting too old for this all-nighter shit.”

“Sure thing, old man, right this way.” And he headed up the stairs to the flat, where they collapsed into separate beds and wished half-hearted ‘good nights’.

As Bucky closed his eyes and listened to the deep and even breathing of the other man in the dark as he was dragged into slumber, he thought to himself that he could get used to this, just maybe.


	9. Chapter 9

Tony awoke the next morning to the smell of coffee and the sound of laughter. There are worse things to wake up to.

He peeled his eyes open and observed the, frankly, filthy window which poured indiscriminate morning light into the small bedroom. He rolled his joints a little and stretched before pulling on the slacks, shoes, and jacket that he’d thrown off the night before, and then he ventured out towards the coffee and the people.

When he descended the stairs and poked his head around the door into the café’s main room, he saw Barnes – Bucky – at the counter, and Romanoff sat on a stool opposite, and a few other customers sat at various tables and chairs throughout the rest of the room. She was stirring her tea with the same satisfied concentration he’d seen in her yesterday, and he was significantly calmer than he’d been the night before, albeit a little puffy around the eyes.

Bucky caught his eye and waved him in.

“Morning. Sort of,” he glanced up at the clock which read eleven-thirty. “White chocolate mocha? Decaf, of course.”

“Sounds perfect.” Tony’s voice was still thick with sleep, but he shuffled towards them both and settled on one of the barstools.

A few moments later, a steaming mug was set in front of him, and he hummed in thanks and appreciation as he took a mouthful.

“So,” Romanoff began, a predatory smirk slowly spreading across her face, “You two lovebirds talk everything out? ‘Cause we still have a flight to catch, Stark.”

Tony rolled his eyes and raised his watch to his face.

“JARVIS, cancel everything - all meetings today and tomorrow, postpone travel plans indefinitely, and extend hotel booking. Also indefinitely.”

_“Of course, Sir.” _Came the helpful little AI’s reply.

Bucky stared at him, an awe-filled expression on his face.

“You have a robot butler. You really weren’t shitting me all those times.”

“You’re just getting that? I have a Batmobile replica I can drive over if you’re still having trouble getting it all.”

“You bought the prop?”

“Built it, actually. Fully functional – if anything, my version’s better.”

“Put the ruler away, Stark,” Romanoff interjected, flicking a little tea at him from the spoon. “You cancelled tomorrow’s meetings but there’s the meet and greet this afternoon that you can’t skip, again.”

“You’ll never guess what I’m gonna do about that.”

“If you say ‘skip it’, I’m going to have to kick you, Colonel Rhodes’ orders.”

“Skip it – Ow!” He rubbed his shin, the woman wasn’t joking.

“Well, whatever you’re doing today, Tony, you’re gonna have to do it elsewhere – I’ve got a shop to run and you’re nothing but a distraction.” Bucky shot Tony a megawatt smile that sort of made his organs puddle on the floor.

“I’m hurt, truly. But I do have a few things I’ve been meaning to clear up in the city that I could do. But, I would only be willing to leave if you promised me something.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?”

“That you’ll be hungry and ready to go around eight.”

“That your way of askin’ a guy out for dinner?”

“Sure is.”

“Make it half-past.” There was something, almost scrutinising in Bucky’s eyes when he spoke.

“Even better.”

That tension broke into a small smile, and Tony downed the rest of his coffee, swapped numbers, said his goodbyes, and headed out, followed closely by his red-headed shadow, all the while feeling pretty damn good.

Said good feeling followed him around the city all day long, as he checked up on branches and out-reach programmes, tested local network security, plugged a few holes in his own firewall, brushed up on his connections to a few restaurateurs and businessmen, and traded in a favour for a last-minute reservation at the best Italian place this side of the Atlantic – in his humble opinion.

When half eight came around, Tony was outside ‘Bean Me Up’, with Happy, of course, waiting for the man of the hour to step outside.

After a few minutes, Tony knocked on the window, to no reply. The lights were out, upstairs and down, and there was no sign of Barnes, at all.

Tony returned to the car, not content to seethe in the light rain outside.

“What do you wanna do, boss?”

“Give him a few minutes, I’m sure he’ll call, or come back, or something.” He tapped his foot on the car floor, keeping irritatingly good time. “Something probably just came up, last minute.”

Time passed, and the more that did the more Tony felt like an asshole. The guy was probably hiding inside his own flat, regretting ever extending the slightest offer of time to Tony, and here he was waiting outside like some bitter ‘friend-zoned’ fifteen-year-old.

“Let’s go home, Happy.”

The clock read ten-fifteen by the time they pulled back up to the hotel, and it was then that his phone blipped, and shortly after reading the message, he looked up to see Natasha Romanoff striding towards him, phone in hand.

“Get back in the car.”


	10. Chapter 10

The funny thing was, he’d actually been looking forward to his dinner plans.

Tony had passed every test Bucky had thrown at him. He had been genuinely convincing in his reassurances that he wasn’t gonna be an asshole, rather than being vaguely disturbed that Bucky was so persistent that he would. He’d left and made up some shit to do when Bucky had told him to. He’d changed the plans when Bucky asked him to, even if it was just the time by thirty minutes. He didn’t add one of those stupid emoji things next to his own name in Bucky’s phone. It seemed like it was going to well.

So, naturally, Bucky had been scared shitless. Going on a date in clothes the guy had bought you, to a place you’d seen on the TV in the hopes that he’d fork out enough to pay the bills and graciously accept rejection – knowing full well that he’d never really been wanted but too proud to pull Bucky up on that – was one thing.

Going somewhere unknown with a billionaire in his own clothes, with the intention of actually making something of it, well that was something else entirely.

So, when he’d closed up the shop early, cleaned up, got Steve to scrutinise all of his clothing options as he was “just heading out to Peg’s, don’t wait up”, and then was faced with actually making a decision himself, he froze.

Bucky couldn’t tell you how long he stood there staring at the blue shirt with the blue jeans, next to the red shirt with the black slacks, next to the stripy shirt with the grey slacks, next to the green shirt with the black jeans, but he did know that it was too long.

Eventually, he chose the blue shirt, because he’d once been told by an old lady down the road that it was his colour, with the grey slacks, because he’d once been wolf-whistled at by a group of teenage girls in them.

“Eyes and ass, Barnes, eyes and ass. That’s all you need.” He could hear Natasha’s voice in his head from the day he’d once asked her if he’d still be good looking without any legs.

Ironic, really, that he’d lost his arm not three weeks later.

Truth be told, it was this reminiscence that filled his mind whilst he should have been listening to the glass on the window of the back room downstairs shatter and two guys in black crawl in through it. Unfortunately, this wasn’t something he would realise until he had been shoved into the trunk of a car and was desperately trying to remember what he’d been told to do in precisely this situation by the guy who’d come into elementary school assemblies to put the fear of god, or at least of adults, into him as a child.

As the time passed, he gave up on fighting against the confines of the trunk and on trying to figure out his location by the turns in the road, because he was pretty sure the driver was fucking with him, since he’d felt at least three u-turns in the last ten minutes.

Instead, he conserved his strength, so that, hopefully, when the trunk opened, he could come out guns, or at least fists, blazing.

However, this plan hadn’t accounted for every single one of Bucky’s fighting instincts to shrivel away and die at the sight of Alexander Peirce’s face, leaving just Bucky nothing more than anxious, vulnerable, and blinking.

“I don’t let people just walk away from me when I’m owed something.”

Great, so the guy wasn’t just a creep. He was fucking unhinged.

“I don’t owe you shit.” It took him a couple of tries to get out but spitting the last word was worth it.

At least that’s what Bucky told himself as he was dragged up the back stairs of what he assumed was Peirce’s apartment block, and tried to keep his shit together.

The next few moments were a blur, all Bucky knew was that there were too many people here who were okay with what was going on for him to be able to do anything about it, he was far too far gone to figure out anything closely resembling a plan, and that that was probably only partially due to whatever some guy had poured down his throat.

Finally, finally, Peirce stopped spewing whatever demented crap about honour and worth that Bucky had stopped listening to as soon as he’d started, and two guys, with absurdly large arms, had picked him up, pinned him to a table and made him damn glad of two things: one, whatever they’d given him was a hell of a drug; and two, there were no pain sensors in his prosthetic, he could tell temperatures, textures, sometimes more accurately than he could with his fleshy one, but mostly, he just felt pressure.

The pressure now was nearly unbearable.

It felt like a failure of bomb disposal up close and nasty, but without the burning ambiguity and haphazard-ness – instead, that had all been replaced with concentrated pulling and pushing, it might have even been sawing.

Then, when he felt like a much-needed weight had been lifted from him, they lifted him once more and dropped him on the floor of some spare room, left and locked the door.

Bucky made quick work of blinking away the delirium and wrestling with the heaviness of his limbs, or what remained of them, fuelled solely by adrenaline and spite at this point. Then, he struggled to his feet, used the furniture for balance, because he sure as shit wasn’t doing that, and pushed against the fancy dresser by the wall until it was in front of the door, so that Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee couldn’t batter the door down as soon as one of them realised he’d nicked their phone.

He spent a few moments trying to recall Tony’s number before he got it – which suggested, even to him, that his priorities might be a little skewed, but the clock on the phone showed that he was nearly two hours late for their date and, maybe it was the drugs, but he felt _bad_ – then he spent no time at all typing in Natasha’s number and sending them both an SOS GPS alert and an unintelligible description of what happened.

All he could do then, once more, was wait for Romanoff to save his ass. He let out a slightly hysterical laugh at how frequently his life seemed to be coming down to that, and it was with that thought that the adrenaline and spite failed to do their jobs, and he succumbed to sleep.

~

When he woke, he found himself in a bright white hospital room, the thrumming of machines and the breeze from the window gently lulling him to consciousness.

At first, he thought he was alone, but then he saw red hair and a tan leather jacket lying, motionless on the sofa across the room. Natasha was on her back, arms folded across her stomach, eyes closed, and out cold.

“I promised I’d wake her when you woke up,” a voice from his left dragged his gaze away from her, “but I’m genuinely afraid of what she might do if I do, marginally more than I am of what she’ll do if I don’t.” Tony continued, his light tone doing nothing to disguise the dark circles under his eyes and the rumpled mess of his clothes.

“How long have I been out?”

“Well, when we got to you, which took a while thanks to your little DIY barricade, you were so far gone, I thought you were gonna fall apart and melt into the carpet. Then, they pumped your stomach to get rid of the rest of whatever they gave you, sedated you properly, and told us that you needed to rest properly, and had done for weeks. Apparently, whatever you’ve been classing as ‘self-care’ for the past few years has been sorely lacking.” To his credit, his tone only wavered over a few words and his smile was mostly devoid of pity. Bucky closed his eyes and let his head fall back onto the pillow.

“Sorry I stood you up.”

“Well, you’ll just have to be extra punctual next time.”

He opened one eye and glanced sceptically at the billionaire in the chair.

“Next time?”

“You think I cry at just any old guy’s hospital bedside?”

“You cried?”

“Figure of speech.”

Natasha’s voice from across the room interrupted: “Like a little girl.”

Bucky snorted at moved to run a hand over his face, only to realise that the hand he’d tried to move just, well, it wasn’t there.

He looked up at Tony’s face, and he winced.

“Yeah, I had hoped that the replacement I’d threatened to leave for would have gotten here before you woke up, but it didn’t. Sorry.”

Bucky fought against the surge of bile in his throat and shook his head.

“It’s fine, what happened?” It was more of a command than a question.

“Apparently, when you took a swing at the guy last time, well done, by the way, he decided that he was gonna take your arm as a trophy. God knows what he’d have done with it if we hadn’t burst in. It was a weird scene.”

“What happened to him?”

“Peirce? Well, Happy, my driver, sat on him ‘till the cops arrived, and let's just say if he doesn’t spend the next few years in prison, he’s gonna spend them fighting a million lawsuits from every lawyer SI even knows about.” Tony sounded angry. More than angry, in fact, he sounded like livid, bitter, and like he hated the guy more than Bucky did. Which was saying something.

“You’d do all that for me?” Bucky let out in little more than a whisper.

Tony’s eyes shot up to meet his, confusion spread across his features. “You say that like you don’t expect it, of course I would.”

“Why?” Bucky couldn’t help but ask.

“I don’t like it when people touch my stuff.” His response was so simple it hit Bucky like a freight car. Of course, Peirce has practically dismembered one of Tony’s inventions, one that he’d already made it pretty clear he was attached to. Bucky pushed down the disappointment in his gut, the little voice that told him he shouldn’t have expected anything else, and the one that told him to punch the guy in his perfect teeth.

“Well, if the new arm’s coming, you don’t need to hang around.” He opted for apathetic rather than desperate or violent, something which Natasha obviously caught on to.

“I’ll give you boys a minute,” She rose and headed for the door before turning back and eyeing Tony warily. “I mean a minute, Stark.”

The man himself then tore his gaze from Bucky to Tasha, and then returned looking like a kicked puppy.

“You want me to go?”

“Well, I’m okay, it’s no skin off your nose, and the arms on its way.”

“But do you want me to go?”

“What difference does it make?”

Tony practically growled in response before standing up and spinning around his chair, planting his hands on its back and declaring: “All the difference in the goddamn world!” The little flare of panic that the outburst brought up in Bucky must have shown on his face because Tony took a deep breath before continuing. “Sorry. I just. I just thought maybe I had something this time. If you want me to go I will, but don’t think it’s because I want to.” He offered a weak smile, “Because I don’t.”

“Why?” Once more the question spilt from his lips before his brain really had a chance to run that one by him.

“Because, like I said, I don’t like it when people touch my stuff – I mean, you aren’t stuff or really mine, but I like you. Okay, I like you, and that doesn’t happen often. Or it does, and I don’t notice until it’s too late, or it’s a really bad idea, or It isn’t reciprocated, or I end up driving them away, or any number of other things – the point is, I like you, and I think you like me, so unless you have a really good reason, then I’m not going anywhere.” The words tumbled out one after another and he gained momentum, ended up babbling really, but all it made Bucky want to do was kiss the guy.

So he did.

He reached up and grabbed at the red, loosened tie that hung from his collar, and pulled him down onto the bed, where he landed with a grunt and scrabbled to steady himself before Bucky lifted him, one-handed, up to his lips, and captured that man’s with his own.

After the initial surprise wore off, Tony tried to pull back, mumbling something about taking it easy, but Bucky twisted a hand in his hair and pulled him back, plunging his tongue into his now open mouth and biting at his bottom lip until he let out a short, high moan, followed by enthusiastically throwing himself into the fray.

It wasn’t long before Bucky had his hand under Tony’s shirt and Tony had one hand woven into Bucky’s hair and the other clutching at the hospital gown covering his chest like it had personally offended him. They kissed like instead of oxygen they were breathing in each other. Their teeth clashed and their mouths slipped, they both had limbs, or bits thereof, digging into the other, it wasn’t, glamorous or romantic, it was messy and, if Bucky was being honest, utterly awful, as kisses went, but it was Tony and it was so long overdue, he really couldn’t bring himself to care about anything else.

That philosophy lasted until Natasha opened the door, took one look at the pair of them and turned around and left again, calling out behind her:

“I said one minute, Stark. One goddamn minute.”

By the time he replied, “It wasn’t my fault!” the door was closed and Bucky was laughing so hard he was breathless.

He looked up at Tony, his bruised and bitten lips, his ruined hair, and his displaced tie. He watched the warmth of his eyes as he searched Bucky’s face for discomfort, for crossed lines, for ugly rearing heads, but there was none.

“So, about that next time?” Bucky said, running his hand down Tony’s spine where it still lay under his shirt.

“Tomorrow? Lunch?” Tony replied, with a contented hum.

“Make of breakfast,” Bucky replied.

“Deal.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Tbh, I wrote most of this and then took a really long break and wasn't feeling it by the ending, so sorry if y'all could tell that. Hope you enjoyed anyway, and any feedback or comments are welcome :)


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